Potential to Contain Multitudes
by hophophop
Summary: "Detection is not just a skill, Watson. It's a point of view." When she came back upstairs with a mug and a peanut butter sandwich, she sat down at the lock table, pushing a stack of books aside to make room for her plate. The one on top caught her eye: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.


_"Detection is not just a skill, Watson. It's a point of view."_

* * *

Watson had just finished her post-run tea and was lounging on her bed before taking a shower when her phone rang. The caller ID made her hesitate for a second before taking a deep breath and picking up. "Hi Em."

"Okay, Jo, now don't be mad at me."

Watson closed her eyes and sighed. She'd been up for three hours already but it was always too early for Emily's schemes.

"Emily, I told you, no more set-ups. Don't make me sorry I picked up the phone."

"No, I swear, that's not what this is."

"Then why am I going to be mad?"

"Because that's what it was. But not now, I promise."

"That what was?"

"Aaron. I mean it's Aaron, now. I think you might be able to help him."

"Em, I told you, he's not interested." And neither am I, she thought to herself, but she really didn't feel like rehashing why she was happier being single, again.

"No, I mean yes, and I kick his shins at least once a week for it, but that's not why I called. A friend of his is missing, but not long enough to get police help, and he asked me if I knew what he could do. I told him I knew a PI, but he doesn't know it's you. Will you talk to him?"

"What, is he there now? Em!"

"No, he's talking to my editor now."

She thought for a minute, then sighed again. "All right, I'll talk to him. But you have to tell him it's me, first. Don't just stick the phone in his hand and run away to spin class or whatever."

"Yeah, okay, you know I only do that to you in person. And thanks. I think he'll really appreciate it; he seems pretty worried. Aaron! Aaron, I've got the PI on the phone. He's coming, Joan. What do you want me to say?"

"Just tell him it's me. The investigator is me."

"Okay. Hang on." She could tell Emily had put her hand over the receiver. She could make out voices, Emily's insistent and Aaron's questioning or possibly incredulous. This went on for a minute and she got up to pace before she heard his voice.

"Hello?"

"Hi Aaron. How can I help?"

There was a long pause, and he cleared his throat. "Uh, hi Joan. You remember, um, the friend I told you about, the one I helped through the legal aid group?"

"Of course I remember. She's missing? Do you know how long? "

"Just a minute. Em, do you mind if I take your phone out there? Thanks. Sorry, Joan, it's noisy in the news room, and nobody here knows..."

"Sure."

The background noise faded to nothing, and she could hear a door close. "That's better. You still there?"

"I'm here. What's her name?"

"Grace. Grace Arbor." As soon as he said it, she remembered Sherlock looking it up, commenting on their anniversary.

"I got a call from her school this morning, she's a kindergarden teacher and didn't show up to work; she's supposed to be there by 7:30, and they called me at 9; I'm her emergency contact on file, obviously, and then I called her real emergency contact, her housemate, and she didn't know anything; she'd spent the night at her girlfriend's and didn't get home until after Grace is usually gone and didn't think anything of it."

He blurted all that out on one breath and paused for a moment before continuing more slowly. "She loves her job, but even if she didn't, she would never just not show up to work. She just wouldn't. So that's how I know something's wrong."

Joan didn't have an answer for his conviction of Grace's conscientiousness; she'd never met the woman, but it seemed a plausible trait in anyone who chose to be around dozens of five-year-olds every single day. She sat down at the end of her bed and looked at the time: 10am. "You're right, the police can't do anything yet, but you can. Do you have any shared bank accounts or credit cards with Grace?"

"Yes; it's part of making the case that it's a legit marriage. A credit card and a bank account we both use a few times a month."

"Great; I want you to check them both and find the most recent transactions she made. You haven't gotten any notice of strange charges on an account, have you?"

"No, not yet. But she's the primary contact on them, so I don't know that I'd get calls or emails about suspicious activity."

"All right, well, check the accounts anyway for anything unusual, anything that indicates her leaving town, and the last time and place she made a transaction."

"Okay. I need to return Emily's phone and get to my desk to login to the accounts. Can I call you back?"

"Of course."

"Uh. You know, the irony's not lost on me, asking you for help because of your investigative skills. Just wanted to get that out there. I was a jerk, before. But I do need help. Or I think Grace does. And you're really good at this."

"Um, thanks, but I haven't done anything yet. Let's see if there's anything we can use, first."

He called back from his desk, and they established that the credit card had already been frozen by the bank for signs of fraudulent use, but the debit card just had a transaction at Trader Joe's from the night before, and a regular series of similar charges over the past few months.

"So you're saying that suggests the debit yesterday was probably her, not whoever has her credit card, given the history of purchases there." His voice sounded hollow, restrained. She realized she'd never consulted for someone she'd known previously; she wasn't sure she would have been able to parse his tension so clearly if she didn't have memories of his voice without it.

"Exactly. Does the entry for the charge list an address or store number?"

"Yes. A number."

"Okay, you can look on the Trader Joe's website and see if the number matches anything in the URL code for a store you suspect Grace is likely to use. If that doesn't work, we can call the company directly, but I find it's often faster to poke around online rather than get lost in the maze of automated responses on the phone."

"And there it is. It's close to her school."

"Good. Now you can call them and ask if there was any kind of incident report at the store last night around the time of the charge."

"Incident... You think something happened there? Will they tell me that?"

"I don't know, but that's the last place we know she was, so it's the first place to start. They might tell you if something happened. Depending on who you talk to, asking as the worried husband might work, but if the person has any knowledge of domestic violence, that strategy will likely backfire. Your best option is to call and ask to speak to a manager, and if that fails, find out when the manager who was working last night will be in."

"And if that doesn't work?"

"Then we'll go to the store and look around for ourselves, maybe find another employee who was on last night."

"You'd do that for me?"

"Well, to be honest, I'm doing it for Grace. But yes, I'll help. I'll meet you at the store if calling them doesn't tell you what you need to know. And one more thing. You didn't mention calling any hospitals."

"No. It was the first thing I thought of, but there are what, dozens or more she might have gone to; I didn't know where to begin. That's why I came over to ask the reporters what to do. Why?"

"Well, I think it's possible she was mugged, given the use of the credit card. Emergency room wait times can be very long when your injuries are not severe, and she could have been stuck in one without a phone or means to contact anyone easily." Or unconscious, or dead, but she figured she didn't need to spell it out, not yet.

"Oh." His voice was suddenly very small, like he was in pain.

"Aaron, we'll find out what happened and figure out where she is. Go ahead and call the store, then call me back."

* * *

She got home mid-afternoon and collapsed in a heap on the library couch.

"So?" Sherlock asked from his desk in the study.

"Did you finish the leftovers from last night? I'm starving."

He extended his arm to wave a white box with a pair of chopsticks sticking out. "Not quite."

"Uh." She deliberated briefly before standing up. "Thanks." She took the box and stood facing the lock table, picking pieces of tofu out with her fingers.

"Your case, Watson?"

She swallowed the last piece and stirred the remaining contents with the chopsticks before setting it down on the lock table. "Yes. She was mugged outside the store, and the manager had a case number from the copy of the police report, and we found out which hospital she'd gone to. Turns out she had a concussion and all her ID gone, and in her confusion she'd told them her Serbian name, and was sometimes speaking Albanian... And then once she started to recover, she was afraid to say more because of her immigration status. But she's going to be fine."

"A happy ending."

"Hmm. Hey, do you have a metrocard reader? When we were waiting for the manager to show we poked around the side of the store and found a metrocard on the ground. There was something on it, could have been blood or maybe just something that seeped from the dumpsters. Anyway, if the manager hadn't been able to tell us anything, I wondered if there was a way to find out how the card had been used to determine whether it might have been hers."

"I do have one. But the card only registers funds available, not starting and stopping points, so that wouldn't have helped you very much."

"Ah, just as well then."

After a moment of quiet he spoke over his shoulder, "There's a pot of tea downstairs."

"Oh thank god. Do you want any more tea? Or the rest of this?" She held out the food container to him, but he shook his head.

When she came back upstairs with a mug and a peanut butter sandwich, she sat down at the lock table, pushing a stack of books aside to make room for her plate. The one on top caught her eye: _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_. Other than a volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales (in german), she couldn't recall ever seeing any children's books in the house. Or much fiction, for that matter.

"What's up with this?" she asked, holding the paperback up to show him.

He turned around to look at what she held before returning to his task. "It was mentioned in some research I was doing on the gold standard."

"The Wizard of Oz?"

"There was a theory that Baum wrote it to comment on the debate over a bimetallic monetary system. It was eventually refuted, evidence that even economists can be seduced by narrative absent any empirical data, but I was curious so I pulled it out of storage."

"You've got more books in storage? Including a secret stash of children's lit?"

"No, and no. It was with the things I brought home from Hemdale that I never wanted to see again after having nothng else to look at for six months, so I stuffed it all into the back of a closet the moment I got back."

Watson was nonplussed, unsure whether it was even appropriate to ask, but he took pity and continued.

"There was a small book swap collection in the common room, a take-one, leave-one system. After I'd exhausted every other option, I started in on whatever was left that I hadn't read before."

Watson flipped through the battered, dog-earred pages. "I think I read this as a kid, but the movie is all I remember now. When I was ten, the girls who weren't obsessed with songs from 'Annie' chose 'Over the Rainbow' in their fantasy auditions for Broadway."

He turned his head back over his shoulder, expectant, but said nothing: Her choice whether to divulge more. "I went to the school because it was the one in my neighborhood, but it also had an arts emphasis and other kids entered a lottery to attend. I liked the art classes but singing was never something I willingly attempted in front of others."

"Curious how many parallels exist between the American primary education system and activities promoted in residental rehab. There was a singing group as well as a range of other 'art therapies' promoted as beneficial to the recovering addict's peace of mind. If they'd had sculpture I might have considered, but it was mostly painting and drawing. Watercolors, charcoal, pencil. Too many volatile compounds in oils, apparently."

"So you turned to desperate reading instead. I take it this was when you still weren't allowed newspaper or internet."

"Hmm. I started with the formal library, and I use the term loosely, managed by the staff. No proper librarian or collection policy other than the best-sellers from pop-psychology and co-dependence section of chain bookstores. Pre-packaged, pre-digested psychobabble slop. Two shelves of 'inspirational' donations from various religious denominations. A small collection of so-called great literature, Dickens, Austen, Twain. That occupied me for a week or two. At least the book swap collection had the occasional bite, like that one, with an oblique treatment of the topic that we were all really most interested in. Alice in Wonderland was quite popular. A little too on the nose for my taste."

"You're saying the clients' library contained books about using?" She frowned and stared down at the cartoonish illustration on the cheap faded cover, then laughed. "It is a story about a very strange trip, I suppose."

"Just so."

"And poppies. Huh. Not to mention illegal immigration."

"Accidental immigration, really. Neither Dorothy nor the wizard intended to go to Oz."

"I don't think that excuse would satisfy Homeland Security." She moved over to her desk to write up her notes on the day's work but stared at the screen on her tablet without entering anything. "The things that do satisfy them... Grace went through a lot in the last 24 hours out of fear of being noticed by them. Aaron too. Doesn't seem to be a particularly logical system."

"No, but I hope you don't expect anything as bold as logic from a government organization."

She picked up her sandwich and then paused, looking up at him. "How are you here, anyway?" He returned her gaze, wary. "As an immigrant, I mean."

"I assure you, Watson, I reside in your country on an entirely legal basis."

"Okay, but how? What kind of visa?" He frowned and said nothing. "I can't imagine Canon Ebersole or Gerald Lydon paid you under the table, and it never occured to me I might be participating in tax fraud when I accepted your partnership offer. I know from a cousin the immigration paperwork is hell; if you were dealing with that, there's no way I wouldn't have heard you complaining about it."

The creases on his face deepened and he stood up abruptly. "I don't want to discuss it."

She narrowed her eyes in concentration as she studied him, then opened them wide in surprise. "You hypocrite!"

He turned and stomped past his locks to the library. She got up and followed him. "It's true, isn't it?"

His head shot back and forth, looking for escape. After a moment he stopped and turned to face her, grimacing. "All right, yes. I am a hypocrite. One of my father's leeches files the paperwork, and I let her. Once a year I show up at the office of Backstabber & Graverobber, Attorneys-at-Law, to sign documents and never give it second thought. Happy?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, yes. As long as they do that for you, I won't have to wake up one morning to find you choosing which dress I should wear because we're off to City Hall for our own green-card marriage."

The look on his face told her that scenario had somehow never crossed his mind, which in itself revealed even more. "Ha! A fate worse than death, apparently. Or at least deportation." She grinned at his discomfiture and returned to collect her sandwich from the lock table, putting the book down again. "Something else we have in common."

She returned to her desk, and a moment later he came back and picked the book up before sitting down again at his other desk, by the back windows. She idly considered the chances that he'd follow up on her marriage comment with an impudent deduction about her sex life or a strident diatribe against the institution or simply ignore the topic altogether. The latter. Definitely the latter.

"The wizard's plight intrigued me," he said, looking at her suspiciously when she gave a little smile to herself. "What?"

"Nothing, this is really good peanut butter. Go on." She took a large bite and gazed down at the plate, hoping he would continue.

He tapped the edge of the book against the desk surface. "It's a parable of the imposter syndrome, a man forced into a position of privilege based on a misunderstanding who continued to hide his weakness behind a facade. And then he got used to it and forgot he had a means of escape until somebody showed up who wanted to escape too." He dropped the book onto a pile at the back of the desk. "Well, saying it out loud now it sounds rather prosaic, but as you noted, I was desperate for intellectual stimulation at the time."

"It is an interesting comparison, the wizard pretending to have gifts he doesn't, and the others openly searching for things they think they don't have, but actually do. Heart, brains, a way home."

They lapsed into silence. Watson considered whether she'd be better off with more tea or a nap but didn't feel strongly enough to get up for either. Looking at her notes from searching for Grace, she wondered what kind of burden it was to pretend the way she and Aaron were doing. Less emotionally devastating, perhaps, than people in "real" marriages who pretended out of fear of being alone or "for the children" but no less cumbersome to manage.

He picked up a folder from the disheveled stack next to the computer and set it down without looking at it. "The Wicked Witch had an army of bee assassins. In the book."

"No wonder you liked it."

"They all died trying to sting the Tin Man."

She pondered that for a while. "Is there some sort of symbolism you're suggesting? The imperviousness of love to the slings and arrows of hate?"

"You know me too well."

"You just liked the bees."

He tilted his head in acknowledgment, then looked down at the file. "I didn't identify with the Wizard, you know."

"No, I don't get 'impostor syndrome' vibes from you." He frowned at "vibes," which she ignored. "Obviously not the Scarecrow, either. And you're not a cat person, so no Lion. Toto?"

"The Wicked Witch of the East, if you're done amusing yourself at my expense."

"The one who's squashed by the house at the start?"

"That's what it felt like, what I thought I'd brought upon myself. Obliteration." He laid his hands flat on the file contents, fingers outstretched, before curling them into loose fists.

"Sherlock—"

"That's what has to happen, Watson, if it's going to work. Starting over from the ruins. You know this." He looked at her keenly, and she nodded. She did know. "And that's the message: life goes on, even when you're reduced to just the ghost following after everybody else as they muck about with your things and do what you can't any more."

"I was thinking about the way Grace and Aaron are like the Wizard, hiding behind their marriage certificate until it's safe to come out. It's not exactly a ghost life, but they are haunted by the secret they keep, and separated from others by it."

"Eventually the purgatory of that ghost life comes to an end, one way or another." He shrugged. "The end of the yellow brick road."

"You stop holding on to what's not there, or you recognize what is and stop looking elsewhere for it." She stared past the piles on her desk, and then she laughed a bit. "Sort of like investigation, you know? Learning how to see clearly, through the distractions and false leads. Well, for me, anyway. Maybe not something you had to learn."

She didn't expect a response, and he remained quiet, looking at the case file open in front of him. She collected her dishes to take them back to the kitchen and was halfway to the stairs before he spoke.

"I wasn't as quick as Dorothy to recognize the value of the companion given to me when I started on this path."

She paused, plate in one hand and mug in the other, surprised by his sentiment and imagining he was, too. "I guess that makes me the Scarecrow? How far are we going to take this metaphor?"

"Flying monkeys would make a very interesting study in aerodynamics, I always thought."

"A comparative analysis with bees, perhaps?"

"Why Watson! That's the spirit. You can be second author."

Much better than returning to Kansas, she thought.

* * *

**Note: **

My contribution to the Elementary Elemental Challenge proposed by forensiphile on tumblr. Beanarie assigned me Green Card Marriage Guy's wife, Trader Joe's, a metrocard, The Wizard of Oz, and kindergarten.

The bit about the book being interpreted as financial commentary by some economists is true.


End file.
